Few, little, less
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I would like to explore ways to express "a small amount" in Quenya.
- a little of: to be used with uncountable nouns, this appears to be the most straightforward - probably níka/nitya/titta with a genitive will do the trick: titta neno
- few: this is trickier. We have nótime attested with the sense of "a countable number of, a few, some", and it would work well in certain contexts, less so in others. E.g. for a sentence like " only a few people we in the room" I am not sure nótime would cover it well. EQ has manka (https://eldamo.org/content/words/word-2603149029.html ), coming from MANGA "lacking", so perhaps in a late Quenya a word related to PEN would work.
- less (than): we could of course simply amplify: amtitta etc; another thought is to take a cue from amba coming from the amplifying root AMA - perhaps the opposite of it could be the deprivation root NEK which provides words like nehta-, nek-, -enka. Perhaps enka as a separate adverb could mean "less" and be the pair of ambe.
I don’t think NEK is…
I don’t think NEK is suitable for “less”. The root means “separate”, not “reduce”.
I think you are on the right path with roots for “small”, but I would throw PIK into the mix, especially given píca- “to lessen, dwindle, wane”. Maybe pinca/pince “less” adjective and adverb, though at one point pince was given the meaning “little”. Or perhaps pice as an updated form of EQ. mike. I think I like pice the best of these.
I don’t know how to do “few”, but I don’t think PEN is suitable: it has more to do with “absence” than “small in quantity”. I can’t think of anything better than nótima at the moment.
lack
It's the common "lacking" meaning of the roots MANGA and PEN and the attested manka "few" that prompted me to derive the same from the later root.
The qualifiers of quantity
"Few" :
*úrimba besides reanimated Qe. manca ?
"Little, slightly" :
I wouldn't have a problem simply using -vë on an adjective from KIT / NIK / PIN / PEY / TIT, especially when trying to be intelligible. Any decent etymology book will show that in Uralic languages there are several synonymous adverb derivations from the local stems corresponding to Fi. piene- and vähä-. That being said, the antonymous oldë, olë and ambë (adv. "more") are obviously important models.
[EDIT: Qe. oldë would probably have to contain the locative *-zē (cp. meneldë) in mature Q morphology, be it that one is also reminded of the (-L-, -N-, -R-) -dë nouns (Exilic Quenya accusative or essive [oialë..] looking like the nominative).]
"Less" :
IMO, the logical result from imitating the comparison of adverbs in PE17 would be *ampícië, in light of the verb píca- "lessen". *Ampícië appears currently also at Eldamo.
In reply to The qualifiers of quantity by S P
manka
The potential problem with manka - besides of it being a homonym with manka- "trade" which may not be a big issue - is that its root means "lacking" which meaning in later Quenya was apparently transferred to PEN, so it's a question of one's approach whether one "allows" the two roots to coexist or prefers to derive a word with the same meaning from the later root.
In reply to manka by Atwe
Re: manka
In light of the similar (later) roots ING and GENG, *mang(w)a seems like a logical update. Or adj. *mangëa < noun *manga (songa-type update) / adj. *mangima < noun mangë (parallel vailima < vailë).
Then there's also {{ aþanótë }}. I don't see what the problem with it would be. Did Tolkien really reject the whole page it was on, with a big X ? Savage.
Early Noldorin [where lh- < L-!] lhigen “small, few, little” (PE13) would correspond to theoretical Quenya forms *líca/lincë, *litya in light of the roots NIK and PIK.
ufárea
Just wanted to add that ufárea is also a useful word when one wants to say that there is too little/too few of something.